Corporate Prisons: Pilate continues to mingle the blood...

See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' 

-Luke 13:7b

Arizona, like many states, has chosen to cut education funding while increasing the funding for incarceration. As Pilate taught politicians centuries ago it is simply easier to snuff the light out of problematic populations than to actually value their existence as human beings. It was inherently easier for Pilate to simply murder another set of Galilean dissidents, this time as they worshipped at the temple, than to actually alleviate the issues causing the dissidence to begin with. It is simply easier for the Governor of Arizona to hand our youth, especially our youth of color, over to enslavement within corporate prisons than it is to alleviate the issues facing our communities, including the severe lack of a robust and funded education system. 

Surely, however, those sent to prison are more deserving of such, on account of their sin, than others. In the vast majority of cases, especially the cases that essentially provide slave labor for corporate prisons, the reality is that they are not more sinful than those who are not so enslaved. It is just that they do not have the material wealth, and the skin tone, to readily avoid being sentenced to such. There are those whom we must restrain for the basic safety of others, the majority of those corporate prisons profit from are not such individuals. It is easier, and a far quicker profit, to imprison them, however, than to nurture and care for them.

As Christians we simply are not allowed to enter into and condone these actions. We are not allowed to assume that those imprisoned are simply more sinful than those who manage to avoid imprisonment. Sometimes a tower crumbles, sometimes a police action profiles a certain ethnic group, the people in that tower and the people in that ethnic group are not spectacularly more sinful or deserving of their fate... they are simply the ones at the wrong place at the wrong time. Pilate focused his police actions on Galileans, whom he perceived as inherently dissident. Our current government focuses its police actions on People of Color, a group America has viewed as subhuman from the signing of our constitution.

As Christians we are not allowed to simply strike a person from the soil. We are not allowed to simply watch as those in power cut down the lives of those around us through imprisonment and lethal force. Our duty is to stand between the powerful and those they wish to abolish. Our duty is to clearly state that, despite what the powers might be, no one is a waste of space.

As Christians we are, in fact, called to go farther. We must ensure that basic realities, such as nourishment, attention, and care are provided to those who are at risk of being destroyed by the forces our government places against them. We are, indeed, called to bring about a system where such things are readily provided, with out question, to each and every individual as a basic reality.

To do otherwise is to not stand with Jesus, but with Pilate... and to stand with Pilate is to stand with the very part of humanity that longs to sacrifice others, even God, for the sake of power and the maintaining of privilege.   

Black Priest Matter... be as Christ to me.

A White Prince Lays a Church Foundation

Absalom Jones was ordained to the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church in 1804. It was 211 years later, in 2015, that Michael Curry was elevated to the role of Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. My suggestion is that this process, spanning two centuries, has not been one of building up but digging down. We have, at the very best, dug out the rough space to begin to lay a foundation.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13) Is an oft repeated bible passage. The goal, too often, has been one of keeping those out of power complacent in their enfeeblement. The conceit being that for a servant to stop laying down their life is to take up the sin of pride. 

Won't you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? The Servant Song by R. Gillard has become a mainstay over the past forty years. The idea, which is a sound one, is that everyone who sings it seeks to enter into the kenosis of Christ, they seek to empty themselves out for the aide and support of others. The problem I have always had with the song is that it does not have the correlating, and requisite, response, to this line. I will let you be my servant, let you be as Christ to me.

To enter into the bonds of friendship as Jesus compels us, we have to name the other individual not only our servant but also our Christ. The perpetuating issue of race in America is that there is a refusal to recognize that which is Black as that which is Christ... that which is Black as that which is Messiah, Lord, Logos, and God. If the questions is won't you let me be your servant then the answer is yes but when the question is won't you let me be as Christ to you then the answer has repeatedly been no. The repeated failure of church and society to say yes in answer to both questions is a marked point as how we fail to inhabit the realm of Christian friendship.

When Absalom Jones was ordained to the Priesthood he was ordained to serve a black congregation that had already formed around him and he and his congregation were denied voice and vote in the councils of the church. It would be 150 years before black clergy and laity were given voice and vote in the councils and conventions throughout the Episcopal Church. It would be 166 years before a black man served as bishop over a diocese. It would be 211 years before a black man served as presiding bishop. Each of these moments, that came about only through the perseverance of many in the face of extreme opposition, was a moment when the Episcopal Church began to say yes. Moments when our Church said yes, that which is Black is that which is Messiah, Lord, Logos, and God.

This is our Church digging the foundation lines, placing the first foundation stones, for building an actual community seeking to inhabit the realm of Christian friendship. We have gotten to the point where every parish would be honored to have a Black Priest, at least specifically in respect to Michael Curry their presiding bishop, be present to preach and celebrate in their community. This is, however, a very different reality to a space where every parish can readily respond to the call of black aspirants to the diaconate and priesthood or where every parish can readily call a black priest as their rector. This is, however, a very different reality to a space where every parish is readily seeking to enter into the transformative but difficult process of actually processing what has been uncovered for them personally in the midst of excavating this foundation. This is, however, a very different reality then a church that has processed its issues and history with race both within and outside itself.

Our church and our society continues to fail in its ability to name that which is Black as that which is Messiah, Lord, Logos, and God. We continue to find ways to construe that which is Black as that which bears the Mark of Cain, that which is less than human, and thus that which can be enslaved, segregated, and imprisoned. That we have so easily moved from outright slavery, to Jim Crow, to imprisonment in corporate prison labor camps speaks to how incapable we are of truly entering into Christian Friendship as a society. Thus it is that Black Lives Matter exists as a movement because as a society we have failed to enter fully into the obligation of Christian Friendship... we are more than happy to say yes, be my servant to that which is Back but have utterly failed again and again to say yes, be my Messiah, Lord, Logos, and God to that which is Black. Until we do so as a church and a society we will fail the basic paradigm of Christian relationship requisite for following Jesus.

        

I could have been a white terrorist…

The summer after my freshman year of college there was a cottonmouth bloom. The county was covered with the snakes. I did not go much of anywhere that summer without my .410, by no means an overly intimidating shotgun, but one none the less. Dawn and dusk walks around the fields, bag full of shells, always taking out one or two, some times over a dozen. Sometimes close enough to the road to wave at passing cars. For a few weeks my walks coincided with the African American Church’s weeknight meetings so that there I was walking the field edge with a shotgun, there they were driving by. At points I would drive by their church, a white clapboard building, as the gospel choir sang and I would slow down to listen… then, gun next to me in the seat, I would rev off down the road, the beat up farm truck I drove lacked a second gear and had to be popped from first to third. Never, for a moment, did it occur to me that a white guy with a gun patrolling his family farm, that a white guy with a gun sitting outside a church, could be taken as anything other than innocent. I could have been a white terrorist.

 

How crazy would have this assumption been on their part?

I had access to guns, they knew I had access to guns. That they only ever saw my .410 meant little. I had at least one gun, and I had no problem casually wondering about with it. Truth be told I had access to lots of guns. Shotguns, rifles, hand guns, riot guns, the lot was at my disposal… at some point that summer I shot each and everyone of them. My family does not stockpile guns, compared to most of my neighbors we did not have a lot, but we had plenty.

There are white terrorist in my family. Almost every day that summer I talked to members of my extended family who had killed African American men, served time for doing it, not mind you for murder but much lesser charges. These acts are part of the known history of the community, known but never mentioned. I have family spread out across several southern states and in each community I know who to go to if I want to meander into the world of white supremacy and the terrorism that flows out of it. Start sifting through the kids I knew as a child, those numerous 4th, 5th, and 6th cousins, and one will discover more than one adult that now walks that walk, talks that talk of white supremacy... A toss of the dice of who happened to be around to hang out with on any given summer... those ones and not the ones I did befriend… well a lot of my life might be different.

It is not a matter of mental stability, lack of drug use, or any other set of alleged reasons that kept me from being a white terrorists. It was a matter of not falling out of the general miasma of racism in which I was surrounded and into one of the dark pits of active white supremacy with its violent racists actions, past, present, and future. I kept away from those pits because I had other options. I went to a private school in the city, I got caught up in diverse crowds, I started going to Boy Scout Camp instead of being on the farm, I voraciously read books from all across the spectrum of view points… That I found a way out is not miraculous, it is the norm... the potential, however, was consistently and latently there. That latent potential was present in my life growing up and I do not think my experience is exceptionally unique for a southern white male... our rare conversations on the issue involve too much acknowledgement of things left unsaid.

It has been a long process from the racist miasma in which I was formed to the space I am in today. A lot of steps from that point to this one, a lot of more steps for me personally to go… I am not certain of how many steps it would have been from that miasma to actually taking up violent acts of racism, especially lethal acts of white terrorism… but I can easily look back at my life now and see a series of available steps and possible associations that could have brought me to that very place. Recognizing this terrible capacity in myself and in my surroundings is not easy, it is not pretty, it is not something that I want to admit. But if white southern men like me do not start acknowledging that potential, acknowledging that latent capacity in the world in which we live and breathe... then nothing will change, that potential will remain, and we will continue to shed the life blood of African Americans, as we have done from the moment we planted our first crops on American soil.

Once I was a white man, standing on the edge of my field, with a gun, watching African Americans drive home from church… and not for a moment did I think this should bother any one. I could have been a white terrorist.